Five college football teams ready to rise in 2018, 5 set to tumble

Some schools get lucky and return 80 percent of their production; others will bring back less than 40 percent. This leads to plenty of year-to-year yo-yoing in terms of teams moving up and down the standings. A few programs are immune for a time due to an overwhelming talent pool (Alabama, Ohio State, ect …) but most schools will endure good years and bad ones in large part due to fluctuating experience.

That leads us to teams set for a breakout in 2018 and others likely to tumble. Using our inside knowledge of programs, returning production numbers (courtesy of SB Nation’s Bill Connelly) and some plain common sense, 247Sports is projecting this upcoming season’s big risers and fallers in terms of the Power Five standings.

We did this a year ago, picking one team from each Power Five conference for each category, and hit on most of our predictions. Some forecasts were only modestly correct (Texas, UCLA, Texas A&M) while others were home runs (Georgia, Michigan State, Pittsburgh), but they were all mostly right.

As for 2018, we like what we see out of the Sunshine State, are concerned with the direction of Ed Orgeron and Mike Leach’s squads, and think perennial contender Oklahoma State is in for a dip. Let’s get started.